How You Feel

Close your eyes and ask yourself, 'what do I feel?'


You might feel thirsty or tired. You might feel healthy and well or perhaps a little under the weather. Maybe you can feel that you are standing or that you are leaning over. You may also feel the world around you - the shape and texture of an apple in your hand, the feel of a chair you're sitting on.

All these feelings have something in common, say psychologists and neuroscientists. They are all mental events, things that happen in the mind. But what if this is all wrong?

What if it's not just the mind, but also the body itself that feels? And not merely physical sensations, but other feelings that seem to have nothing to do with bodies. Things like 'emotions' and 'intuitions' - joy or rage, anxiety or optimism, or the feeling of being hard done by or misunderstood?

Drawing on the latest research and a range of classic and contemporary thought, How You Feel shows you that your brain and your body are two parts of a single system that creates your mind and mental life. You will discover that you don't have feelings, thoughts and emotions inside your body, you have them with your body. There can be no mind without the body.

Psychology is no longer about the brain, or about 'mind and body', it is about the whole that is you.

JAMES TRESILIAN is a behavioural neuroscientist and one of the world's leading experts in the study of human sensory perception and the control of bodily movement. He is a professor and former chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick, UK and the author of Sensorimotor Control & Learning.